Areas of Expertise

Russian domestic politics, in particular the executive and elites
Digital politics in Russia and Eurasia
Belarusian domestic politics
Russian-Belarusian and Russian-Ukrainian relations
Comparative authoritarianism with a regional focus on the post-Soviet space
Constitutional politics and succession mechanisms in non-democracies

Short Bio

Dr. Fabian Burkhardt has been an associate fellow in DGAP’s Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia since February 2023. He works as a research associate in the Political Science Research Group at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg, Germany. In addition, Burkhardt is editor of Russland-Analysen and Ukraine-Analysen and is a member of the editorial team of the Russian Analytical Digest. He is also an affiliated researcher at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen. Since October 2022, he has been the cochair of the Politics and Social Sciences Stream of the German Association for East European Studies (DGO).

Burkhardt’s academic work is in comparative authoritarianism. He focuses on executives, elites, constitutions, and digital politics in authoritarian regimes in the post-Soviet space, in particular in Russia and Belarus. His latest research project assesses the trade-offs related to digital transformation in authoritarian regimes like Russia. He has published in journals such as Post-Soviet Affairs, Europe-Asia Studies, and Russian Politics.

Before joining IOS, Burkhardt worked for the Eastern Europe and Eurasia research division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the National Research University ”Higher School of Economics“ in Moscow. At Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, he worked at both the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science and the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies. In October and November 2022, he was a visiting researcher at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Burkhardt received his PhD in political science in 2018 from the University of Bremen for a dissertation on the institution of the presidency in the Russian Federation. He holds an master’s degree in Russian studies from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He spent one year as an exchange student at Saint Petersburg State University.